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How Apple Can Conquer The Gaming Industry Without Firing A Shot

The fact that Apple CEO Tim Cook didn’t actually visit game developer Valve doesn’t really change my predictions about Apple’s role in the gaming industry or rumors about a possible Apple video game console.

In the narrow case of Apple and Valve, I think we still will see more collaboration between the two now that Valve is releasing all its titles across platforms.

On the other hand, rumors of hardware collaboration strike me as a longshot at best, and dreamy-Utopian at worst. So do rumors about an Apple console.

I mentioned previously that not running on Windows creates a barrier to entry for Apple computers into the serious gaming market, a claim which many commenters scoffed at. “Dual-booting isn’t that much of a hoop to jump through!” they reminded me. Sure, for people who want to dual-boot it’s a very simple process.

Still, I think they’re missing the larger point. It may not be a huge hoop for some people, but when you take into account the broader market it really is: how many gamers simply choose PC to avoid the added hassle and added expense of dual-booting?

That’s without even considering how gamers enjoy tinkering with their PCs, upgrading parts, etc. Things you can’t do with an Apple product to nearly the same degree.

Real barriers to a flourishing gaming platform exist for Apple, and it’s unlikely Apple will choose to pursue either consoles or PC gaming in a very big way, though they will be happy enough to work with developers like Valve or Blizzard who release cross-platform titles.

The Revolution Will Be Mobile

Apple is a threat to consoles, but not in the way some people are talking about it. Apple isn’t coming out with an Xbox killer – at least not directly. Mobile games are already cutting into the traditional gaming market, and it will only get worse. Even as game hardware and software sales drop off a cliff, mobile gaming is only getting bigger.

So don’t count on Apple making a concerted push into the console market.

Rather than deal with new console hardware, it’s far more likely that Apple will continue to pursue app gaming across its Mac, iPhone, iPad, and television products. We’ll see gaming apps take off in earnest when Apple finally breaks into the television market. Many casual gamers will have no need for a console if their TV sports a large catalog of gaming apps already.

Since mobile devices will see a perpetual upgrade cycle while consoles only get upgrades every few years (or longer) mobile gaming will have a distinct technological edge, at least in evolutionary terms, similar to the edge PC gaming has, but with a much broader consumer base.

We’ll see a much more mainstream gaming market opening up to mobile and Apple television gamers, while more serious titles remain on consoles and especially PC. It will be more difficult than ever to produce serious titles at a profit, however, and the trend will be toward the “online universes” that EA has talked about.

Games will be connected across multiple platforms – a notion that can be both good, when it’s purely optional, and bad when it’s done by forcing players to play on multiple platforms just to complete a game. Think Mass Effect 3.

Mix in the growing free-to-play model and the future of gaming begins to emerge, as does Apple’s role in all of it as king of the hill in a very, very different industry than the one we have now.

I admit, it’s not a vision that particularly excites or delights me.

I’m suspicious of free-to-play and I’m uninspired by most mobile games. Angry Birds does nothing for me. Hopefully the market stays vibrant enough to continue pumping out serious titles and doesn’t continue loping toward the lowest common denominator. Hopefully we see increasingly ambitious games on PC and on consoles.

And maybe gaming apps will see their own transformation for the better.

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There certainly does seem to be a gap in the games market as far as Mac’s go. From what I can tell it appears the general sentiment is that Mac’s are for work, while PC’s are for games. It would seem strange if Apple didn’t at least consider trying to change this by looking for ways to get more games onto the Mac – and Valve would be a good way to do this.

It could also be desktop based as PCs are now. If Apple spec’d out a Mac Mini for gaming.

PC gamers may not like the lack of customization, but console gamers are used to that. The middle ground is where Apple can take over; keep the gfx card, RAM, HDD upgradeable, and you have an Apple gaming machine.

Just curious, but why do people constantly talk about PC and Console players as if they are two different species? Most people who I know have a console also play games on a PC.

OK, so maybe you couldn’t make a Mac gaming rig. But then few people I know who play games on PC have gaming rigs anyway – sometimes it is more convenient to play on a PC rather than a console. And sometimes you can find types of games on one that are not available on the other – or player made mods for games that change the experience.

I think it would be fair to say that there doesn’t seem to be any reason to think Mac users would not buy and play games if they were more available, regardless of the specifics of the platform. Nor that it might not convince people who want a computer for both work and play to pick a Mac over a PC. Sure, it’s probably not going to increase their sales overnight. But it might help change the impression of the Mac from a ‘work’ platform to a more ‘multi-purpose’ one – which could increase sales in the long term.

It wouldn’t really cost anything for Apple to try this, maybe make some of their phone gaming apps free to download to the Mac if you log in with the same account. If enough people start doing this it could help convince the games industry to start releasing more games for the Mac.

This is a good point. Lots of console players also play on PC. But I think the PC audience is unique in its own way. Not as many people play on PC as on consoles, for one thing, and there tends to be somewhat different tastes reflected in that.

I don’t think that the audiences for consoles and PC’s are all that different.

If people play fewer PC games it is because they are not quite as accessible, in terms of finding them and then having to check specs to make sure it will work on your system, as console games. Back when Dragon Age 2 was released there was an argument that ‘console’ players didn’t want to play traditional RPG’s, which was why the game play and RPG elements had been ‘dumbed down’ to appeal to that market. It was then pointed out that this was false logic. If console gamers were not playing RPG’s it was because they were not available – and given that Dragon Age Origins (a traditional RPG) sold something like four times the number of copies as Dragon Age 2 on the X-Box alone would appear to show this up.

I suspect that the reason for the difference in sales is more to do with the perception that consoles are ‘better’ for games (which these days they are not for the most part). And therefore people are more likely to buy the console version of a particular title. After that they probably don’t have the money to spend on PC games, or don’t see any reason to buy the same game twice.

While many PC gamers have a console, they also have different tastes then some who only consoles. For example, there are certain games that really only work on a PC. Some of the highly involved simulator games or strategy games (my favorite genre!) really only work on PC. That’s why they often can be considered a breed apart, even if they also own consoles. There’s also the fact that it takes a certain someone to spend the money on a custom gaming rig and to put it all together. Not just anyone puts together their own computer, for one thing, it’s terrifying. You worry about any little bit of static or a drop of sweat hitting the motherboard, just a terrifying stressful experience :-)

Nice article but this quote is a little silly: “nVidia is predicting that mobile graphics processors will be as powerful as the Xbox 360 chip by 2014, and you can see how gaming apps are going to be a very big deal in a couple of years.”

All that tells me is that by 2014 $500 smartphones will have GPUs that are nearly a decade old?

Maybe you were referencing more your earlier statement about the potential surrounding built-in tv apps, in which case I wholly agree with you.

The point is that it won’t stop there. In 2015 and 2016 mobile GPUs will exceed the capabilities of the Xbox 360. If we get next-gen consoles in 2013/2014, they likely won’t be updated again for at least five years. The question is, how powerful will the GPUs in an Apple TV be in 2016? 2017? If Apple releases a new line of TVs every year (or even every two years) this really does change the playing field. I’m just not sure if it will be healthy for the gaming industry or not.

Certainly the drawn out life cycles of traditional consoles could be a problem (and I’m not envious of the people in charge of finding a resolution to it) but as long as the big three can retain market share over a particular type of gamer, the games will still be released with those platforms’ limitations in mind, no matter how powerful (and expensive to develop for) Apple’s offering is.

It’s really up to Apple to offer something that is different enough to entice this heavily entrenched market away from their current systems (they all have gamers locked in with their favourite console exclusives and increasing cross platform connectivity, not to mention trophies/gamerscore on the PS360) but similar enough so as to not alienate them.

If there’s anything these past console generations have shown, power is absolutely no measure of success, it’s about the games and the online ecosystem. (And marketing, of course, as M$oft know).